10 ideas
| 11211 | If a sound conclusion comes from two errors that cancel out, the path of the argument must matter [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: If a designated conclusion follows from the premisses, but the argument involves two howlers which cancel each other out, then the moral is that the path an argument takes from premisses to conclusion does matter to its logical evaluation. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], II) | |
| A reaction: The drift of this is that our view of logic should be a little closer to the reasoning of ordinary language, and we should rely a little less on purely formal accounts. |
| 11210 | Standardly 'and' and 'but' are held to have the same sense by having the same truth table [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: If 'and' and 'but' really are alike in sense, in what might that likeness consist? Some philosophers of classical logic will reply that they share a sense by virtue of sharing a truth table. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000]) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard view which Rumfitt sets out to challenge. |
| 11212 | The sense of a connective comes from primitively obvious rules of inference [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: A connective will possess the sense that it has by virtue of its competent users' finding certain rules of inference involving it to be primitively obvious. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], III) | |
| A reaction: Rumfitt cites Peacocke as endorsing this view, which characterises the logical connectives by their rules of usage rather than by their pure semantic value. |
| 11214 | We learn 'not' along with affirmation, by learning to either affirm or deny a sentence [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: The standard view is that affirming not-A is more complex than affirming the atomic sentence A itself, with the latter determining its sense. But we could learn 'not' directly, by learning at once how to either affirm A or reject A. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], IV) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This seems fairly anti-Fregean in spirit, because it looks at the psychology of how we learn 'not' as a way of clarifying what we mean by it, rather than just looking at its logical behaviour (and thus giving it a secondary role). |
| 22594 | In 1794 France all individual and legal rights were suppressed by the general will [Dunt] |
| Full Idea: In the French Revolution the general will replaced democracy, the separation of powers, the rule of law, and individual rights. | |
| From: Ian Dunt (How to be a Liberal [2020], 03) | |
| A reaction: I had some sympathy with the idea of the general will, but Dunt has persuaded me otherwise. It is the embodiment of the democratic problem of the tyranny of the majority. |
| 22602 | Over several centuries a set of eight main liberal values was established [Dunt] |
| Full Idea: Over the centuries liberal values were established: freedom of the individual, reason, consent in government, individual rights, the separation of powers, protection of minorities, autonomy, and moderation. | |
| From: Ian Dunt (How to be a Liberal [2020], 13) | |
| A reaction: What's not to like? 'Moderation' might be a sticking point, for anyone who thinks that very large social changes are needed. |
| 22596 | No government, or the whole nation, can control an individual beyond legitimate scope [Dunt] |
| Full Idea: When a government of any sort puts a threatening hand on that part of individual life beyond its proper scope, …even if it were the whole nation, except for the man it is harassing, it would be no more legitimate for that. | |
| From: Ian Dunt (How to be a Liberal [2020]), quoted by Ian Dunt - How to be a Liberal 4 | |
| A reaction: The obvious question is what counts as 'proper scope' - and who gets to define it? If the individual can define that, then criminals can appeal to this principle. The state must be persuaded of it, then asked to stick to it during conflicts. |
| 22603 | Laissez-faire liberalism failed to give people the protections and freedoms needed for a good life [Dunt] |
| Full Idea: Laissez-faire liberalism failed, because it did not offer people protections and real freedom - against discrimination, insecure work, educational disadvantage, lack of social respect, absence of representation. It was cold, distant, and ineffective. | |
| From: Ian Dunt (How to be a Liberal [2020], 13) | |
| A reaction: A very nice summary, which I take to be correct. |
| 22592 | Nationalism pretends that we can only have a single identity [Dunt] |
| Full Idea: Nationalism pretends that there is only one identity, that we cannot be more than one thing at once. | |
| From: Ian Dunt (How to be a Liberal [2020], Today) | |
| A reaction: Dunt is a defender of liberalism, which assumes a wide degree of pluralism. Could I be a British citizen, but love France more than Britain? I don’t see why not, but it is not an ideal situation. |
| 5492 | How can essences generate the right powers to vary with distance between objects? [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: In Newtonian physics the distance between two objects determines the attractive forces between them, but then the objects will have to be sensitive to the distance, in order to 'know' what forces to generate; but distance isn't a causal power. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Two Problems for Essentialism [2001], p.170) | |
| A reaction: Ellis replies that he is not troubled, because he believes in essential properties which are separate from their causal roles. Indeed, how else could you explain their causal roles? Still, distance must be mentioned when explaining gravity. |